“Shalom!” Jama said.
“Shalom,” the woman replied, stroking the lines on his hand, nodding her approval; she saw a good life there.
Jama pointed to his chest and said, “Jama.”
The woman held out her hand. “Chaja.”
At seven in the evening the refugees gathered on the deck, everyone but a few women on laundry duty, and found whatever space they could to sit or stand around the cage. These meetings were called regularly to solve disputes between refugees, or between the refugees and the British, but sometimes the people gathered just to talk and sing. Jama, Abdullahi, and Sidney were the only crewmen who seemed interested in these powwows, and they joined the refugees whenever they were called. Abdullahi treated the meetings as a kind of theater: he shook his head, laughed, shouted out “Ajeeb!” and clapped his hands together. Jama also enjoyed the drama; the actors took him back to Gerset and its domestic intrigues and machinations. Sidney sat apart, scratching things into his notepad. Under the glare of the searchlight, ghostly figures complained about the mothers who did not clean up after their children in the latrines, the noisiness of the British marines walking along the duckwalks at night, sometimes even disputes from the war or before the war were brought up. An old man in nothing but his undergarments was squaring off with a much stronger bare-chested man.
Jama asked Abdullahi what the old man wanted. “He says this young man stole his property before the war.”
Sidney was laughing at the amateur boxers, as were some of the refugees, but Jama worried for the old bearded man. His bony legs could barely hold him up but he persisted in shoving and enraging the younger man.
The old man cried out in English, “I used to be somebody! I had a name that was respected, I owned a farm, a flour mill, a forest!”
The men were separated and a young woman stood up to speak. “I knew this man in Poland, he was a friend of my father’s, he taught Hebrew to my sisters and me. When the German and Polish soldiers came, he saved my life. He hid me in a barrel in his flour mill while the rest of my family were walked to the river and shot. I saw their naked bodies floating down the river. If it wasn’t for this man I would be in that river with them. If he says this man stole his property, then it is the truth.”
German burghers spoke after Hungarian farmers and Red Army soldiers, some described prewar lives of furs, chauffeurs, and governesses while others had known only the misery of poor harvests, pogroms, and bitter winters. Even now, good fortune was sprinkled haphazardly and confusingly, as many refugees had lost forty or fifty members of their family while others were still huddled with their children and parents. Abdullahi translated as much as he could for Jama while Sidney scribbled things down. The children were also given time to speak, and a little girl with a crooked back told the people that her family had fled to Uzbekistan during the war, and when they had tried to return to their village in Poland afterward her parents had been attacked and killed. She was now one of the many frail orphans aboard the Runnymede Park who believed that Palestine would be a land of peace and milk. All the refugees spoke of Palestine as a kind of empty paradise where orange trees grew and birds sang, which had no relation to the poor Arab country that Jama had passed through. There were too many here to squeeze into all the beyt al-deefs of Palestine. They had been set adrift on the dark sea, and Jama wondered where this ship would take them and where it would take him. He had long stopped thinking of Somaliland as his home, but the refugees made him realize how precarious it was to never belong anywhere. These floating Jews—hounded, harried, and lost—had no stars to guide them, but he did.
Chaja stood up, waiting for her chance to speak; she was impatiently tapping her feet, grasping her son to her hip. A young Polish partisan was speaking about the need to fight for a Jewish state. Many of the young people had been part of Zionist groups in their villages and their hunger for a homeland now coalesced with a desire to avenge their families. The partisan seemed unable to see a future without more violence, more battles, more ghettos, more blood on the streets. “If they do not let us live on our land, we will crush them like ants, we will smash their heads against boulders and walls,” he said in heavily accented English.
Chaja pushed him aside and stepped under the huge lamp. “I have lived through Polish hell, Russian hell, German hell, and now British hell, but I swear by God that I will not condemn my children to Palestinian hell. I have lost my husband and son already, watched their ashes blow out of Nazi chimneys. I want peace, just peace, give me a little scrap of wasteland as long as my children can eat and sleep in peace. My father was a philosophy teacher but my daughters cannot even read, you think they can learn while you are fighting and smashing heads? Take your violence and murder to people who have had enough of comfort. I want nothing from guns and bombs. You think you are David from the Bible but we are not your worshippers or subjects. In Palestine there must be no war. If there is war we may as well stay in Poland, or go to Eritrea, Cyprus, or wherever the British want to send us.”
Chaja spoke until her throat was raw and thick veins stuck out along her neck, and she brandished her baby like a weapon, thrusting him at the partisan. Jama barely understood what she said but he was moved by her. The partisan looked so weak beside her that if Jama had to follow either of them, he would follow Chaja. He had seen how strong women were better leaders than strong men. With the Italians he had learned how to destroy, but the women of Gerset had taught him how to create and sustain life.
The refugees remained quiet after Chaja’s speech, they nursed their dreams of peace and dreams of war in silence. They were cut off from the rest of the world, unable to comprehend real life anymore; farms, schoolhouses, synagogues were all things of their imagination now. Eventually a teenage boy pulled out a harmonica and played to them, children clapped and sang “Hatikvah,” serenading their fearful parents with sweet wavering voices.
Jama, Abdullahi, and Sidney clapped along. Jama remembered sitting as a child beside his father under the gigantic moon of the Somali desert. Old men dominated the evenings, talking about trade and clan disputes until they grew tired, then the young men would take their place to sing love songs and recite poetry that gloried in the richness of their language. Jama wished that his mother had had her chance to speak out like Chaja, to show those men all the workings of her wonderful mind and all the courage in her heart.
The journey to Hamburg brought back all the memories the refugees had been suppressing for months, smothered with fanciful ideas of a Jewish heaven in Palestine. On German soil there could be no denial of what had happened, the smell of burnt corpses would return to nostrils and the pain of unending hunger would torment stomachs whatever food they were given. Brendan the donkeyman had no time for the refugees, he called them “smelly ungrateful yids” and encouraged the soldiers to take a hard line with them. The soldiers were angry and resentful; they had been duped along with the refugees, having been told that they were only to escort the ship to Cyprus. Now they vented their frustration whenever they could, shoving the children, refusing small requests, and talking loudly as the prisoners tried to sleep. It was a forlorn ship that approached Hamburg, the long, slow funeral march had come to an end. “We have returned. We have returned to Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen,” cried one man.
“I lost twenty-eight of my family here,” said an old woman. The refugees broke out in wailing and ripped their clothes, even Mordechai Rosman watched the dark land appearing through the fog with his head bowed, his arms outstretched as if on a rack. The Runnymede Park waited while the two other prison ships, Ocean Vigour and Empire Rival, were cleared out. British troops and German guards dragged out frenzied men and women, American jazz blaring out to muffle the screams. A homemade bomb was found on the Empire Rival, to the pleasure of the British; at last their suspicions had been confirmed, the purported refugees were actually dangerous terrorists desperate to injure their British guardians. The bomb was safely detonated on the dockside, but the refugees
on the Runnymede Park would suffer for it. Batons went flying, hair was pulled out, soldiers kicked Mordechai Rosman down the gangplank, and possessions were thrown into the sea. Jama came on deck during this festival of violence, and he had never believed white people could treat each other with such open violence, without regard for age or infirmity, but in front of his eyes was proof.
“Wahollah! My God, this is terrible!” said Jama as he saw Chaja trying to escape down the gangplank, her head bent to avoid the blows as her children skidded and tripped beside her.
The Jews were handed over to the smirking Germans, to be returned to barbed wire and watchtowers in isolated camps in northern Germany. The men from the Haganah and the boys who had thrown biscuit tins and dirty clothes at the British soldiers were arrested for unruly behavior. The Runnymede Park became a ghost ship. After the ABs returned it to a semblance of order, Captain Barclay told the crew that they were going to Port Talbot in Wales for dry-docking before returning to Port Said. Jama would earn eighty pounds for this journey. His aim was to return to Gerset with two hundred pounds, and buy a prize camel and a large store and house for Bethlehem, but the other sailors laughed at his plan.
“Forget it, boy, we’re leaving this ship at Port Talbot. All the work is here, why do you want to return to stinking Egypt? If you stay on, it will be without any of us,” said Abdullahi.
“So what are you going to do?” asked Jama.
“Get another ship from Port Talbot or Hull. We get English wages on ships from England, a quarter more.”
The prospect of even greater pay was seductive but Jama worried that Bethlehem would give up on him; a year had already passed without any contact between them. She wouldn’t wait anymore, he thought. What if she had found someone else, he wondered, a Kunama or some rich Sudanese merchant? Any imam would consider Jama’s disappearance abandonment and grounds for divorce. As a child Jama had wanted desperately to have wings, and to go home now was like asking Icarus to set fire to his wings mid-flight, but he could not fly forever and keep Bethlehem.
Without the distraction of the refugees and soldiers, the Runnymede Park was now an ordinary freighter and the typical tensions in a mixed crew became clear. The British cooks would prepare pork alongside the Muslim men’s food, the British would mock their accents and skinny bodies, the drunken behavior of the ABs was abhorrent to the Somalis. The ABs liked Jama, though, his youth brought out a paternalistic kindness, and his inability to understand their insults meant his happy, ingenuous demeanor was not hardened.
They pronounced his name “Jammy.” “Hey, Jammy”; “You finished, Jammy?”; “Want a jammy biscuit, Jammy?” They enjoyed using his name, and as the chill of the North Sea deepened it was “Want a jumper, Jammy?” and “Bet you’re not used to this,” with exaggerated shivers.
The older Somalis told Jama that he was being mocked but he found it hard to care. His earlier fear of the white men had subsided; the British had given him work, high-paid work, and for that they could say what they liked. The ABs were positively loving in comparison with the Italians he had worked for, they never hit or humiliated him, they were nothing to be scared of despite Brendan the donkeyman’s efforts. Brendan stalked around after the Somalis, his large baby blue eyes threaded with red veins. Buck teeth stuck out from his puckered mouth, and his hair was balding in patches across his skull. The Somalis called him Sir Ilkadameer, “Sir Donkeyteeth,” to his face, and he would glow at the “Sir,” believing Ilkadameer to be a native term of respect.
Sidney would call the Somalis to join the rest of the crew for cigarette breaks and Jama would converse slowly in sign language and broken English. Sidney was especially friendly to Jama, though when he invited him to his cabin, Abdullahi forbade him to go; he will make you drink whiskey, he warned, but Jama went anyway. Sidney had a large cabin to himself underneath where the cage had been, and on the white wall he had stuck up pictures of white women in underwear that made their breasts point like goat horns. The only other picture on the wall was a yellow hammer and sickle on a red background. “You know what that means, Jama?”
Jama thought it must be something to do with his work, maybe he was a farmer as well as a sailor, but he shook his head, not wanting to embarrass himself.
“It means I believe that workers like you”—he poked his finger in Jama’s chest for emphasis and then pointed at himself—“and me should unite, together, understand?” His fingers were now knotted, caressing one another.
The smile fell from Jama’s face. The intertwined fingers meant only one thing and he didn’t want that, but what about the naked women, perhaps they were just to disguise Sidney’s real intentions?
He turned to the door but Sidney grabbed his shoulder. “Hold on a second, take this.” He shoved a fat dictionary into Jama’s hand. “I’m sure you’ve been about a bit, I would like to hear about it someday.”
Jama took the dictionary and ran out, giving a cursory “Tanks much” to Sidney.
For Jama, the rest of the journey to Port Talbot couldn’t have been more peaceful. He met Sidney occasionally in the smoking room, and when he didn’t repeat his hand caressing, Jama brought the dictionary with him and asked for help in learning to read it. Sidney read out articles from Time, following the words with his finger while Jama peered over his shoulder. The smell of cigarettes and the pleasure of reading would forever become entwined for Jama. Not only were his eyes being fed with new sights but the magazine articles poured news from the world into his mind, he listened to Sidney as if he were a sorcerer divining events in tea leaves, and he began to see his place in history. He now understood that the war that had ravaged Eritrea had blazed across the world. Jama stared at the photographs of Hiroshima, Auschwitz, Dresden. Naked children screaming with hollow mouths appeared in all the photographs, calling to each other. African, European, and Asian corpses were piled up in the pages of the magazine beside adverts for lipstick and toothpaste. Already the world was moving on, from somber black-and-white to lurid color.
Sometimes Sidney stopped reading and reached for a map. “Over here in Burma was the worst hell, North Africa was a picnic in comparison. I can handle desert heat but a man isn’t made to fight in a jungle, gave me the fucking willies. Me and the Somalis in the battalion were going barmy. When you can’t see the sky or feel a breeze it does something funny to a fella. The Japs would just appear out of nowhere, slit your throat, and jump back into the bushes. Look, a Somali mate put this on my arm.”
Sidney rolled up his sleeve and revealed a dark blue snake cut into his flesh. Jama touched the livid serpent resting on Sidney’s biceps like a python bathing on a hot boulder. It reminded him of the signs nomads cut into their camels. The snake was Jama’s totem; perhaps Sidney would put one on his arm.
“I thought I was gonna die in that place, honestly and truly, I’m surprised to be sitting here, between Hitler and Hirohito I thought my number was up.”
Jama rolled up his sleeve, and gestured between his small hump of a biceps and Sidney’s.
“You want one?” laughed Sidney.
“Si.”
“You worked for Italians, eh? Well, I’ll make more a hash of a tattoo than an Italian would soldiering. Better you get one done in London.”
Jama took the map out of Sidney’s hands, found the pink spot Idea had said was Somaliland, moved his finger along the Red Sea coast, beyond Gerset, into Sudan and Egypt, to where a sea separated his old world from the new.
Sidney put his blackened fingernail in the blue sea of the cold north. “That’s where we are, lad. Right up in the North Sea. You’re a long way from home, aren’t you?”
Jama nodded.
Sidney ripped a piece off the map, took a pen out of his shirt pocket. “Jama, I live in London, by the river in Putney. If you ever need anything, come by and give me a bell.” Sidney wrote down his address in awkward capitals and gave it to Jama.
Jama walked the perimeter of the deck. The searchlight was switched off and a f
ull moon beamed down on the sea, its reflection floating on the indigo waves. Light from the ship scintillated and sent stars over the water. Jama breathed in the cold salty air, found Bethlehem’s star, and blew a kiss to it. A whale cruised in the distance, cutting slowly through undulating waves, and Jama turned around to show someone the whale but the deck was deserted. He had never imagined such creatures existed, but every day brought new wonders, monsters and knowledge. Bethlehem would never believe his stories. How could he explain the size of a whale to her, how it shot a geyser from its back, how it lived in ice-cold water? Jama closed his eyes and pictured Bethlehem’s nighttime routine; she would check her chickens were safely locked up, then the goats, she would then take the half-empty pan off the fire and store the remains for breakfast. The day’s labor over, she would find Jama’s star, send her love, and then stretch out her lovely limbs on the mat that still smelled faintly of him and sing herself to sleep.
PORT TALBOT, WALES, SEPTEMBER 1947
The Runnymede Park hung close to the white chalk of England before reaching the Irish Sea, the Bristol Channel, and Swansea Bay. Beyond the tubes, funnels, and chimneys of the steelworks, thick smoke hung over Port Talbot. Jama went to Captain Barclay and received his fortune of eighty pounds in an envelope thick with notes. Another hundred pounds and he could live like a suldaan in Eritrea. When Captain Barclay asked if he would be staying on the Runnymede Park, Abdullahi, the serpent in paradise, whispered in his ear, “The next ship will earn you twice this one. If you stay on for a woman you will be the biggest fool in the world.”
Black Mamba Boy Page 24